This is the natural evolution of the franchise. It was always gonna evolve to this on more capable hardware. MH's mechanics, missions and separate room structure only existed because PS2 and subsequent weaker hardware couldn't handle a true open world.
I hope they got rid of the grinding. I played Toukiden on PS4 which is like MH, the way progress works just isn't suited for consoles.
Btw, the 4chan rumor was wrong about the staff, the main MH development team is behind this.









